Former NXT Women’s Champion Ember Moon was released from WWE back on November 4 following NXT’s rebranding to NXT 2.0, and being on and off television since Shotzi was called up to SmackDown in July of last year.
Ember was in the process of undergoing a change on NXT prior to her release, which never came to fruition. Ember chatted to Chris Van Vliet on Insight about her final few months in NXT, and the frustrations that led to her ‘not having fun anymore’.
She explained:
“My last four months was just one of those moments where I wasn’t having fun anymore. It started with Shotzi being gone and drafted. I remember thinking — I was sitting at home and I got a phone call saying, ‘Hey, we don’t want you to be upset, but Shotzi just got moved to SmackDown and she’s debuting with Tegan Nox as a tag team.’ I was sitting there and I’m getting this phone call about her getting drafted, ‘Oh my God, I’m so happy for her,’ and then the tag team thing popped up and I was like, ‘but we’re the tag team and we have merch and we’re doing fun things and we had just gotten into our groove with the banter.’ They were like, ‘Don’t worry, we have something for you.’ ‘Okay, cool.’ I remember going to Hunter and he was like, ‘I have no clue what’s happening, we’ll figure it out together.’ That was so much of what I needed at the time because no one knew what was happening. Bayley had gotten injured, I know Shotzi and Tegan were doing dark matches for a tryout anyway. The problem I had was, some of these new writers were coming from Raw and SmackDown, ‘we had no idea you and Shotzi were a tag team.’ A lot of WWE backstage is having to play the game. ‘It’s cool, we get it, we’re down in NXT. It’s not like we were front page (of the website) when we won the titles. That’s fine, yes.’ You’re just having to eat the shit sandwich and smile with shit in your teeth a lot of times. It’s all about not making waves.”
Ember continued on, recalling a story where WWE told her to ‘dress more sexy like Mandy Rose’, saying:
“When you care about something, not just for yourself but for everyone involved, it hurts so much more because, for so many years, I’ve been not about myself. I’ve been for the match and other people. To be told that I’ve done nothing wrong and I was taken off TV for doing nothing wrong, it hurt so bad because I was so happy walking into work. I remember when Shotzi left, I remember going to my makeup artist and saying, ‘I am so unhappy.’ We would have to sit through stupid meetings about how we’d have to dress sexy. I remember looking at someone else (and laughing). I cater to children. I’m not about to wear fishnet booty buttcheek shorts because we had a two-hour meeting about how to dress like Mandy Rose. That’s not fair. Mandy is absolutely phenomenal and an amazing person, but not everyone is Mandy Rose. I started seeing this downslope as soon as Hunter was gone. For the first bit, we didn’t know why, we just knew he wasn’t there. I got so angry. I was sitting there thinking, ‘I did nothing wrong. I didn’t piss off Vince.’ They take Shotzi away, Hunter is gone. ‘You guys promised me this wouldn’t happen. You promised I wouldn’t be lost in the shuffle. I went on this losing streak to help you guys out and build other talent so I could get a reward,'”
Ember Moon, now known once again as Athena, recently won the vacant Warrior Wrestling Women’s Championship.
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